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Settling the Northern Colonies

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1619–1700

God hath sifted a nation that he might send Choice Grain into this Wilderness.

WILLIAM STOUGHTON [OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY], 1699

A lthough colonists both north and south werebound together by a common language and a

common allegiance to Mother England, they estab-lished different patterns of settlement, differenteconomies, different political systems, and even dif-ferent sets of values—defining distinctive regionalcharacteristics that would persist for generations.The promise of riches—especially from golden-leaved tobacco—drew the first settlers to the south-ern colonies. But to the north, in the fertile valleys ofthe middle Atlantic region and especially along therocky shores of New England, it was not worldlywealth but religious devotion that principallyshaped the earliest settlements.

The Protestant Reformation Produces Puritanism

Little did the German friar Martin Luther suspect,when he nailed his protests against Catholic doc-trines to the door of Wittenberg’s cathedral in 1517,

that he was shaping the destiny of a yet unknownnation. Denouncing the authority of priests andpopes, Luther declared that the Bible alone was thesource of God’s word. He ignited a fire of religiousreform (the “Protestant Reformation”) that licked itsway across Europe for more than a century, dividingpeoples, toppling sovereigns, and kindling the spiri-tual fervor of millions of men and women—some ofwhom helped to found America.

The reforming flame burned especially brightlyin the bosom of John Calvin of Geneva. This somberand severe religious leader elaborated MartinLuther’s ideas in ways that profoundly affected thethought and character of generations of Americansyet unborn. Calvinism became the dominant theological credo not only of the New England Puritans but of other American settlers as well, including the Scottish Presbyterians, FrenchHuguenots, and communicants of the Dutch Re-formed Church.

Calvin spelled out his basic doctrine in alearned Latin tome of 1536, entitled Institutes of theChristian Religion. God, Calvin argued, was all-

43

powerful and all-good. Humans, because of thecorrupting effect of original sin, were weak andwicked. God was also all-knowing—and he knewwho was going to heaven and who was going tohell. Since the first moment of creation, somesouls—the elect—had been destined for eternalbliss and others for eternal torment. Good workscould not save those whom “predestination” hadmarked for the infernal fires.

But neither could the elect count on their pre-determined salvation and lead lives of wild,immoral abandon. For one thing, no one could becertain of his or her status in the heavenly ledger.Gnawing doubts about their eternal fate plaguedCalvinists. They constantly sought, in themselvesand others, signs of “conversion,” or the receipt ofGod’s free gift of saving grace. Conversion wasthought to be an intense, identifiable personalexperience in which God revealed to the elect theirheavenly destiny. Thereafter they were expected to lead “sanctified” lives, demonstrating by theirholy behavior that they were among the “visiblesaints.”

These doctrines swept into England just as KingHenry VIII was breaking his ties with the RomanCatholic Church in the 1530s, making himself thehead of the Church of England. Henry would havebeen content to retain Roman rituals and creeds,but his action powerfully stimulated some Englishreligious reformers to undertake a total purificationof English Christianity. Many of these “Puritans,” asit happened, came from the commercially de-pressed woolen districts (see p. 28). Calvinism, withits message of stark but reassuring order in thedivine plan, fed on this social unrest and providedspiritual comfort to the economically disadvan-taged. As time went on, Puritans grew increasinglyunhappy over the snail-like progress of the Protes-tant Reformation in England. They burned withpious zeal to see the Church of England wholly de-catholicized.

The most devout Puritans, including those whoeventually settled New England, believed that only“visible saints” (that is, persons who felt the stir-rings of grace in their souls and could demonstrateits presence to their fellow Puritans) should beadmitted to church membership. But the Church ofEngland enrolled all the king’s subjects, whichmeant that the “saints” had to share pews and com-munion rails with the “damned.” Appalled by thisunholy fraternizing, a tiny group of dedicated Puri-

tans, known as Separatists, vowed to break awayentirely from the Church of England.

King James I, a shrewd Scotsman, was head ofboth the state and the church in England from 1603to 1625. He quickly perceived that if his subjectscould defy him as their spiritual leader, they mightone day defy him as their political leader (as in factthey would later defy and behead his son, Charles I).He therefore threatened to harass the more bother-some Separatists out of the land.

The Pilgrims End TheirPilgrimage at Plymouth

The most famous congregation of Separatists, flee-ing royal wrath, departed for Holland in 1608. Dur-ing the ensuing twelve years of toil and poverty, theywere increasingly distressed by the “Dutchification”of their children. They longed to find a haven wherethey could live and die as English men andwomen—and as purified Protestants. America wasthe logical refuge, despite the early ordeals ofJamestown, and despite tales of New World canni-bals roasting steaks from their white victims overopen fires.

A group of the Separatists in Holland, afternegotiating with the Virginia Company, at lengthsecured rights to settle under its jurisdiction. Buttheir crowded Mayflower, sixty-five days at sea,missed its destination and arrived off the stonycoast of New England in 1620, with a total of 102persons. One had died en route—an unusually shortcasualty list—and one had been born and appropri-ately named Oceanus. Fewer than half of the entireparty were Separatists. Prominent among the non-belongers was a peppery and stocky soldier of for-tune, Captain Myles Standish, dubbed by one of hiscritics “Captain Shrimp.” He later rendered indis-pensable service as an Indian fighter and negotiator.

The Pilgrims did not make their initial landingat Plymouth Rock, as commonly supposed, butundertook a number of preliminary surveys. Theyfinally chose for their site the shore of inhospitablePlymouth Bay. This area was outside the domain ofthe Virginia Company, and consequently the settlersbecame squatters. They were without legal right tothe land and without specific authority to establisha government.

44 CHAPTER 3 Settling the Northern Colonies, 1619–1700

Before disembarking, the Pilgrim leaders drewup and signed the brief Mayflower Compact.Although setting an invaluable precedent for laterwritten constitutions, this document was not a con-stitution at all. It was a simple agreement to form acrude government and to submit to the will of themajority under the regulations agreed upon. Thecompact was signed by forty-one adult males, elevenof them with the exalted rank of “mister,” though notby the servants and two seamen. The pact was apromising step toward genuine self-government, for soon the adult male settlers were assembling tomake their own laws in open-discussion town meet-ings—a great laboratory of liberty.

The Pilgrims’ first winter of 1620–1621 took agrisly toll. Only 44 out of the 102 survived. At onetime only 7 were well enough to lay the dead in theirfrosty graves. Yet when the Mayflower sailed back toEngland in the spring, not a single one of the coura-geous band of Separatists left. As one of them wrote,“It is not with us as with other men, whom smallthings can discourage.”

God made his children prosperous, so the Pil-grims believed. The next autumn, that of 1621,brought bountiful harvests and with them the firstThanksgiving Day in New England. In time the frailcolony found sound economic legs in fur, fish, andlumber. The beaver and the Bible were the early

mainstays: the one for the sustenance of the body,the other for the sustenance of the soul. Plymouthproved that the English could maintain themselvesin this uninviting region.

The Pilgrims were extremely fortunate in theirleaders. Prominent among them was the culturedWilliam Bradford, a self-taught scholar who readHebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and Dutch. He waschosen governor thirty times in the annual elec-tions. Among his major worries was his fear thatindependent, non-Puritan settlers “on their particu-lar” might corrupt his godly experiment in the

Massachusetts Bay Colony 45

William Bradford (1590–1657) wrote in OfPlymouth Plantation,

“Thus out of small beginnings greater thingshave been produced by His hand that madeall things of nothing, and gives being to allthings that are; and, as one small candlemay light a thousand, so the light herekindled hath shone unto many, yea in somesort to our whole nation.”

wilderness. Bustling fishing villages and other set-tlements did sprout to the north of Plymouth, onthe storm-lashed shores of Massachusetts Bay,where many people were as much interested in codas God.

Quiet and quaint, the little colony of Plymouthwas never important economically or numerically.Its population numbered only seven thousand by1691, when, still charterless, it merged with its giantneighbor, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But thetiny settlement of Pilgrims was big both morally andspiritually.

The Bay Colony Bible Commonwealth

The Separatist Pilgrims were dedicated extremists—the purest Puritans. More moderate Puritans soughtto reform the Church of England from within.Though resented by bishops and monarchs, theyslowly gathered support, especially in Parliament.But when Charles I dismissed Parliament in 1629and sanctioned the anti-Puritan persecutions of thereactionary Archbishop William Laud, many Puri-tans saw catastrophe in the making.

In 1629 an energetic group of non-SeparatistPuritans, fearing for their faith and for England’sfuture, secured a royal charter to form the Massa-chusetts Bay Company. They proposed to establisha sizable settlement in the infertile Massachusettsarea, with Boston soon becoming its hub. Stealing amarch on both king and church, the newcomersbrought their charter with them. For many yearsthey used it as a kind of constitution, out of easyreach of royal authority. They steadfastly deniedthat they wanted to separate from the Church ofEngland, only from its impurities. But back in Eng-land, the highly orthodox Archbishop Laud snortedthat the Bay Colony Puritans were “swine whichrooted in God’s vineyard.”

The Massachusetts Bay enterprise was singu-larly blessed. The well-equipped expedition of 1630,with eleven vessels carrying nearly a thousandimmigrants, started the colony off on a larger scalethan any of the other English settlements. Continu-ing turmoil in England tossed up additional enriching waves of Puritans on the shores of Massa-chusetts in the following decade (see “Makers ofAmerica: The English,” pp. 50–51). During the “GreatMigration” of the 1630s, about seventy thousand

refugees left England. But not all of them were Puri-tans, and only about twenty thousand came toMassachusetts. Many were attracted to the warmand fertile West Indies, especially the sugar-richisland of Barbados. More Puritans came to thisCaribbean islet than to all of Massachusetts.

Many fairly prosperous, educated personsimmigrated to the Bay Colony, including JohnWinthrop, a well-to-do pillar of English society, whobecame the colony’s first governor. A successfulattorney and manor lord in England, Winthropeagerly accepted the offer to become governor ofthe Massachusetts Bay Colony, believing that he hada “calling” from God to lead the new religious exper-iment. He served as governor or deputy governor fornineteen years. The resources and skills of talentedsettlers like Winthrop helped Massachusetts pros-per, as fur trading, fishing, and shipbuilding blos-somed into important industries, especially fish andships. Massachusetts Bay Colony rapidly shot to thefore as both the biggest and the most influential ofthe New England outposts.

Massachusetts also benefited from a sharedsense of purpose among most of the first settlers.


C a r i b b e a n S e a

A T L A N T I CO C E A N

FromEnglandc. 70,000

To West In

dies

c.48

,000

To New Englandc. 20,000

The Great English Migration, c. 1630–1642 Much of the early history of the United States was written byNew Englanders, who were not disposed to emphasize thelarger exodus of English migrants to the Caribbean islands.When the mainland colonists declared independence in 1776,they hoped that these island outposts would join them, but theexistence of the British navy had a dissuading effect.

“We shall be as a city upon a hill,” a beacon tohumanity, declared Governor Winthrop. The Puritanbay colonists believed that they had a covenant withGod, an agreement to build a holy society thatwould be a model for humankind.

Building the Bay Colony

These common convictions deeply shaped theinfant colony’s life. Soon after the colonists’ arrival,the franchise was extended to all “freemen”—adultmales who belonged to the Puritan congregations,which in time came to be called collectively the Congregational Church. Unchurched menremained voteless in provincial elections, as didwomen. On this basis about two-fifths of adultmales enjoyed the franchise in provincial affairs, afar larger proportion than in contemporary Eng-land. Town governments, which conducted muchimportant business, were even more inclusive.There all male property holders, and in some casesother residents as well, enjoyed the priceless boonof publicly discussing local issues, often with muchheat, and of voting on them by a majority-rule showof hands.

Yet the provincial government, liberal by thestandards of the time, was not a democracy. Theable Governor Winthrop feared and distrusted the“commons” as the “meaner sort” and thought thatdemocracy was the “meanest and worst” of all formsof government. “If the people be governors,” askedone Puritan clergyman, “who shall be governed?”True, the freemen annually elected the governorand his assistants, as well as a representative assem-bly called the General Court. But only Puritans—the“visible saints” who alone were eligible for churchmembership—could be freemen. And according tothe doctrine of the covenant, the whole purpose ofgovernment was to enforce God’s laws—whichapplied to believers and nonbelievers alike. More-over, nonbelievers as well as believers paid taxes forthe government-supported church.

Religious leaders thus wielded enormous influ-ence in the Massachusetts “Bible Commonwealth.”They powerfully influenced admission to churchmembership by conducting public interrogations ofpersons claiming to have experienced conversion.Prominent among the early clergy was fiery John

Cotton. Educated at England’s Cambridge Univer-sity, a Puritan citadel, he emigrated to Massachu-setts to avoid persecution for his criticism of theChurch of England. In the Bay Colony he devotedhis considerable learning to defending the govern-ment’s duty to enforce religious rules. Profoundlypious, he sometimes preached and prayed up to sixhours in a single day.

But the power of the preachers was notabsolute. A congregation had the right to hire andfire its minister and to set his salary. Clergymenwere also barred from holding formal politicaloffice. Puritans in England had suffered too much atthe hands of a “political” Anglican clergy to permitin the New World another unholy union of religiousand government power. In a limited way, the baycolonists thus endorsed the idea of the separation ofchurch and state.

The Puritans were a worldly lot, despite—oreven because of—their spiritual intensity. Like JohnWinthrop, they believed in the doctrine of a “calling”to do God’s work on earth. They shared in what waslater called the “Protestant ethic,” which involvedserious commitment to work and to engagement inworldly pursuits. Legend to the contrary, they alsoenjoyed simple pleasures: they ate plentifully, drankheartily, sang songs occasionally, and made lovemonogamously. Like other peoples of their time inboth America and Europe, they passed laws aimedat making sure these pleasures stayed simple byrepressing certain human instincts. In New Haven,for example, a young married couple was finedtwenty shillings for the crime of kissing in public,and in later years Connecticut came to be dubbed“the Blue Law State.” (It was so named for the bluepaper on which the repressive laws—also known as“sumptuary laws”—were printed.)

Yet life was serious business, and hellfire wasreal—a hell where sinners shriveled and shrieked invain for divine mercy. An immensely popular poemin New England, selling one copy for every twentypeople, was clergyman Michael Wigglesworth’s “Day of Doom” (1662). Especially horrifying werehis descriptions of the fate of the damned:

They cry, they roar for anguish sore,and gnaw their tongues for horrour.

But get away without delay,Christ pitties not your cry:

Depart to Hell, there may you yell,and roar Eternally.

Religion in the Bay Colony 47

Trouble in the Bible Commonwealth

The Bay Colony enjoyed a high degree of social har-mony, stemming from common beliefs, in its earlyyears. But even in this tightly knit community, dis-sension soon appeared. Quakers, who flouted theauthority of the Puritan clergy, were persecutedwith fines, floggings, and banishment. In oneextreme case, four Quakers who defied expulsion,one of them a woman, were hanged on the BostonCommon.

A sharp challenge to Puritan orthodoxy camefrom Anne Hutchinson. She was an exceptionallyintelligent, strong-willed, and talkative woman, ulti-mately the mother of fourteen children. Swift andsharp in theological argument, she carried to logical

extremes the Puritan doctrine of predestination.She claimed that a holy life was no sure sign of sal-vation and that the truly saved need not bother toobey the law of either God or man. This assertion,known as antinomianism (from the Greek, “againstthe law”), was high heresy.

Brought to trial in 1638, the quick-wittedHutchinson bamboozled her clerical inquisitors fordays, until she eventually boasted that she hadcome by her beliefs through a direct revelation fromGod. This was even higher heresy. The Puritan mag-istrates had little choice but to banish her, lest shepollute the entire Puritan experiment. With her fam-ily, she set out on foot for Rhode Island, thoughpregnant. She finally moved to New York, where sheand all but one of her household were killed by Indi-ans. Back in the Bay Colony, the pious JohnWinthrop saw “God’s hand” in her fate.

More threatening to the Puritan leaders was apersonable and popular Salem minister, RogerWilliams. Williams was a young man with radicalideas and an unrestrained tongue. An extreme Sepa-ratist, he hounded his fellow clergymen to make aclean break with the corrupt Church of England. Healso challenged the legality of the Bay Colony’s char-ter, which he condemned for expropriating the landfrom the Indians without fair compensation. As if allthis were not enough, he went on to deny theauthority of civil government to regulate religiousbehavior—a seditious blow at the Puritan idea ofgovernment’s very purpose.

Their patience exhausted by 1635, the BayColony authorities found Williams guilty of dissemi-nating “newe & dangerous opinions” and orderedhim banished. He was permitted to remain severalmonths longer because of illness, but he kept up hiscriticisms. The outraged magistrates, fearing that hemight organize a rival colony of malcontents, madeplans to exile him to England. But Williams foiledthem.

The Rhode Island “Sewer”

Aided by friendly Indians, Roger Williams fled to theRhode Island area in 1636, in the midst of a bitterwinter. At Providence the courageous and far-visioned Williams built a Baptist church, probably thefirst in America. He established complete freedom ofreligion, even for Jews and Catholics. He demanded


no oaths regarding religious beliefs, no compulsoryattendance at worship, no taxes to support a statechurch. He even sheltered the abused Quakers,although disagreeing sharply with their views.Williams’s endorsement of religious tolerance madeRhode Island more liberal than any of the otherEnglish settlements in the New World, and moreadvanced than most Old World communities as well.

Those outcasts who clustered about RogerWilliams enjoyed additional blessings. They exer-cised simple manhood suffrage from the start,though this broad-minded practice was later nar-rowed by a property qualification. Opposed to spe-cial privilege of any sort, the doughty RhodeIslanders managed to achieve remarkable freedomof opportunity.

Other scattered settlements soon dotted RhodeIsland. They consisted largely of malcontents andexiles, some of whom could not bear the stifling the-ological atmosphere of the Bay Colony. Many ofthese restless souls in “Rogues’ Island,” includingAnne Hutchinson, had little in common with RogerWilliams—except being unwelcome anywhere else.The Puritan clergy back in Boston sneered at RhodeIsland as “that sewer” in which the “Lord’s debris”had collected and rotted.

Planted by dissenters and exiles, Rhode Islandbecame strongly individualistic and stubbornlyindependent. With good reason “Little Rhody” waslater known as “the traditional home of the other-wise minded.” Begun as a squatter colony in 1636without legal standing, it finally established rights tothe soil when it secured a charter from Parliamentin 1644. A huge bronze statue of the “IndependentMan” appropriately stands today on the dome of thestatehouse in Providence.

New England Spreads Out

The smiling valley of the Connecticut River, one ofthe few highly fertile expanses of any size in all NewEngland, had meanwhile attracted a sprinkling ofDutch and English settlers. Hartford was founded in1635. The next year witnessed a spectacular begin-ning of the centuries-long westward movementacross the continent. An energetic group of BostonPuritans, led by the Reverend Thomas Hooker,swarmed as a body into the Hartford area, with theailing Mrs. Hooker carried on a horse litter.

Three years later, in 1639, the settlers of the newConnecticut River colony drafted in open meeting atrailblazing document known as the FundamentalOrders. It was in effect a modern constitution,which established a regime democratically con-trolled by the “substantial” citizens. Essential fea-tures of the Fundamental Orders were laterborrowed by Connecticut for its colonial charterand ultimately for its state constitution.

Another flourishing Connecticut settlementbegan to spring up at New Haven in 1638. It was a prosperous community, founded by Puritanswho contrived to set up an even closer church-government alliance than in Massachusetts. Al-though only squatters without a charter, thecolonists dreamed of making New Haven a bustlingseaport. But they fell into disfavor with Charles II asa result of having sheltered two of the judges whohad condemned his father, Charles I, to death. In1662, to the acute distress of the New Havenites, thecrown granted a charter to Connecticut that mergedNew Haven with the more democratic settlementsin the Connecticut Valley.

The Expansion of New England 49

Conn

ectic

u tR.

ATLANTIC OCEAN

1 641

1679

1 6 77

1691

Portsmouth

Sa lem

CambridgeBoston

Plymouth(Pi lgrims)

Providence

Portsmouth

New Haven

Spring f ie ld

Hartford

MAINE 1623

NEW HAMPSHIRE

CONNECTICUT 1635-1636

NEW HAVEN

1638

PLYMOUTH 1620

MASSACHUSETTS BAY 1630

RHODE ISLAND

1636

LONG ISLAND

Seventeenth-Century New England Settlements The Massachusetts Bay Colony was the hub of New England.All earlier colonies grew into it; all later colonies grew out of it.

The English

During the late Middle Ages, the Black Death andother epidemics that ravaged England kept the

island’s population in check. But by 1500 increasedresistance to such diseases allowed the populationto soar, and a century later the island nation wasbursting at the seams. This population explosion,combined with economic depression and religiousrepression, sparked the first major European migra-tion to England’s New World colonies.

Some of those who voyaged to Virginia andMaryland in the seventeenth century were independ-ent artisans or younger members of English gentryfamilies. But roughly three-quarters of the Englishmigrants to the Chesapeake during this periodcame as servants, signed to “indentures” rangingfrom four to seven years. One English observer

described such indentured servants as “idle, lazie,simple people,” and another complained that manyof those taking ship for the colonies “have been pur-sued by hue-and-cry for robberies, burglaries, orbreaking prison.”

In fact, most indentured servants were youngmen drawn from England’s “middling classes.”Some fled the disastrous slump in the cloth trade inthe early seventeenth century. Many others hadbeen forced off the land as the dawning nationaleconomy prompted landowners in southwesternEngland to convert from crop fields to pasture andto “enclose” the land for sheep grazing. Making theirway from town to town in search of work, they even-tually drifted into port cities such as Bristol andLondon. There they boarded ship for America,where they provided the labor necessary to cultivatethe Chesapeake’s staple crop, tobacco.

Some 40 percent of these immigrants of themid-seventeenth century died before they finishedtheir terms of indenture. (Because of the high deathrate and the shortage of women, Chesapeake soci-ety was unable to reproduce itself naturally until thelast quarter of the seventeenth century.) The sur-vivors entered Chesapeake society with only their“freedom dues”—usually clothing, an ax and hoe,and a few barrels of corn.

Nevertheless, many of those who arrived earlyin the century eventually acquired land and movedinto the mainstream of Chesapeake society. After1660, however, opportunities for the “freemen”declined. In England the population spurt ended,and the great London fire of 1666 sparked a buildingboom that soaked up job seekers. As the supply ofEnglish indentured servants dried up in the late seventeenth century, southern planters looking forlaborers turned increasingly to black slaves.

Whereas English immigration to the Chesa-peake was spread over nearly a century, most

50

English voyagers to New England arrived within asingle decade. In the twelve years between 1629 and1642, some twenty thousand Puritans swarmed tothe Massachusetts Bay Colony. Fleeing a sustainedeconomic depression and the cruel religious repres-sion of Charles I, the Puritans came to plant a godlycommonwealth in New England’s rocky soil.

In contrast to the single indentured servants of the Chesapeake, the New England Puritansmigrated in family groups, and in many cases wholecommunities were transplanted from England toAmerica. Although they remained united by thecommon language and common Puritan faith theycarried to New England, their English baggage wasby no means uniform. As in England, most NewEngland settlements were farming communities.But some New England towns re-created the spe-cialized economies of particular localities in Eng-land. Marblehead, Massachusetts, for example,became a fishing village because most of its settlershad been fishermen in Old England. The townsfolkof Rowley, Massachusetts, brought from Yorkshire innorthern England not only their town name but alsotheir distinctive way of life, revolving around textilemanufacturing.

Political practices, too, reflected the towns’ var-iegated English roots. In Ipswich, Massachusetts,

settled by East Anglian Puritans, the ruling select-men served long terms and ruled with an iron hand.By contrast, local politics in the town of Newburywere bitter and contentious, and officeholders werehard pressed to win reelection; the town’s founderscame from western England, a region with little tra-dition of local government. Although the Puritans’imperial masters in London eventually circum-scribed such precious local autonomy, this diverseheritage of fiercely independent New Englandtowns endured, reasserting itself during the Ameri-can Revolution.

51

Land Use in Rowley, Massachusetts, c. 1650 The settlers of Rowley brought from their native Yorkshire thepractice of granting families very small farming plots andreserving large common fields for use by the entirecommunity. On the map, the yellow areas show private land;the green areas show land held in common.

Far to the north, enterprising fishermen and furtraders had been active on the coast of Maine for adozen or so years before the founding of Plymouth.After disheartening attempts at colonization in1623 by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, this land of lakesand forests was absorbed by Massachusetts Bayafter a formal purchase in 1677 from the Gorgesheirs. It remained a part of Massachusetts fornearly a century and a half before becoming a sepa-rate state.

Granite-ribbed New Hampshire also sprangfrom the fishing and trading activities along its nar-row coast. It was absorbed in 1641 by the graspingBay Colony, under a strained interpretation of theMassachusetts charter. The king, annoyed by thisdisplay of greed, arbitrarily separated New Hamp-shire from Massachusetts in 1679 and made it aroyal colony.

Puritans Versus Indians

The spread of English settlements inevitably led toclashes with the Indians, who were particularlyweak in New England. Shortly before the Pilgrimshad arrived at Plymouth in 1620, an epidemic, prob-ably triggered by contact with English fishermen,had swept through the coastal tribes and killedmore than three-quarters of the native people.Deserted Indian fields, ready for tillage, greeted thePlymouth settlers and scattered skulls and bonesprovided grim evidence of the impact of the disease.

In no position to resist the English incursion,the local Wampanoag Indians at first befriended thesettlers. Cultural accommodation was facilitated bySquanto, a Wampanoag who had learned Englishfrom a ship’s captain who had kidnapped him someyears earlier. The Wampanoag chieftain Massasoitsigned a treaty with the Plymouth Pilgrims in 1621and helped them celebrate the first Thanksgivingafter the autumn harvests that same year.

As more English settlers arrived and pushedinland into the Connecticut River valley, confronta-tions between Indians and whites ruptured thesepeaceful relations. Hostilities exploded in 1637between the English settlers and the powerfulPequot tribe. Besieging a Pequot village on Con-necticut’s Mystic River, English militiamen and theirNarragansett Indian allies set fire to the Indian wig-wams and shot the fleeing survivors. The slaughter

wrote a brutal finish to the Pequot War, virtuallyannihilated the Pequot tribe, and inaugurated fourdecades of uneasy peace between Puritans andIndians.

Lashed by critics in England, the Puritans madesome feeble efforts at converting the remainingIndians to Christianity, although Puritan missionaryzeal never equaled that of the Catholic Spanish andFrench. A mere handful of Indians were gatheredinto Puritan “praying towns” to make the acquain-tance of the English God and to learn the ways ofEnglish culture.

The Indians’ only hope for resisting Englishencroachment lay in intertribal unity—a pan-Indianalliance against the swiftly spreading English settle-


ments. In 1675 Massasoit’s son, Metacom, calledKing Philip by the English, forged such an allianceand mounted a series of coordinated assaults onEnglish villages throughout New England. Frontiersettlements were especially hard hit, and refugeesfell back toward the relative safety of Boston. Whenthe war ended in 1676, fifty-two Puritan towns hadbeen attacked, and twelve destroyed entirely. Hun-dreds of colonists and many more Indians lay dead.Metacom’s wife and son were sold into slavery; hehimself was captured, beheaded, and drawn andquartered. His head was carried on a pike back toPlymouth, where it was mounted on grisly displayfor years.

King Philip’s War slowed the westward march ofEnglish settlement in New England for severaldecades. But the war inflicted a lasting defeat on NewEngland’s Indians. Drastically reduced in numbers,dispirited, and disbanded, they thereafter posed onlysporadic threats to the New England colonists.

Seeds of Colonial Unity and Independence

A path-breaking experiment in union was launchedin 1643, when four colonies banded together toform the New England Confederation. Old Englandwas then deeply involved in civil wars, and hencethe colonists were thrown upon their own re-sources. The primary purpose of the confederationwas defense against foes or potential foes, notablythe Indians, the French, and the Dutch. Purely inter-colonial problems, such as runaway servants andcriminals who had fled from one colony to another,

also came within the jurisdiction of the confedera-tion. Each member colony, regardless of size,wielded two votes—an arrangement highly dis-pleasing to the most populous colony, Massachu-setts Bay.

The confederation was essentially an exclusivePuritan club. It consisted of the two Massachusettscolonies (the Bay Colony and bantam-sized Ply-mouth) and the two Connecticut colonies (NewHaven and the scattered valley settlements). ThePuritan leaders blackballed Rhode Island as well asthe Maine outposts. These places, it was charged,harbored too many heretical or otherwise undesir-able characters. Shockingly, one of the Maine townshad made a tailor its mayor and had even shelteredan excommunicated minister of the gospel.

Weak though it was, the confederation was thefirst notable milestone on the long and rocky roadtoward colonial unity. The delegates took totteringbut long-overdue steps toward acting together onmatters of intercolonial importance. Rank-and-filecolonists, for their part, received valuable experi-ence in delegating their votes to properly chosenrepresentatives.

Back in England the king had paid little atten-tion to the American colonies during the early yearsof their planting. They were allowed, in effect, tobecome semiautonomous commonwealths. Thisera of benign neglect was prolonged when thecrown, struggling to retain its power, becameenmeshed during the 1640s in civil wars with theparliamentarians.

But when Charles II was restored to the Englishthrone in 1660, the royalists and their Church ofEngland allies were once more firmly in the saddle.Puritan hopes of eventually purifying the old

Indians and Colonists in New England 53

The Stuart Dynasty in England*

Name, Reign Relation to America

James I, 1603–1625 Va., Plymouth founded; Separatists persecutedCharles I, 1625–1649 Civil wars, 1642–1649; Mass., Md. founded(Interregnum, 1649–1660) Commonwealth; Protectorate (Oliver Cromwell)Charles II, 1660–1685 The Restoration; Carolinas, Pa., N.Y. founded; Conn. charteredJames II, 1685–1688 Catholic trend; Glorious Revolution, 1688William & Mary, 1689–1702 King William’s War, 1689–1697(Mary died 1694)

*See p. 29 for predecessors; p. 110 for successors.

English church withered. Worse, Charles II wasdetermined to take an active, aggressive hand in themanagement of the colonies. His plans ran head-long against the habits that decades of relative inde-pendence had bred in the colonists.

Deepening colonial defiance was nowhere moreglaringly revealed than in Massachusetts. One of theking’s agents in Boston was mortified to find thatroyal orders had no more effect than old issues ofthe London Gazette. Punishment was soon forth-coming. As a slap at Massachusetts, Charles II gaverival Connecticut in 1662 a sea-to-sea charter grant,which legalized the squatter settlements. The verynext year the outcasts in Rhode Island received anew charter, which gave kingly sanction to the mostreligiously tolerant government yet devised in

America. A final and crushing blow fell on the stiff-necked Bay Colony in 1684, when its precious char-ter was revoked by the London authorities.

Andros Promotes the First American Revolution

Massachusetts suffered further humiliation in 1686,when the Dominion of New England was created byroyal authority. Unlike the homegrown New Eng-land Confederation, it was imposed from London.Embracing at first all New England, it was expandedtwo years later to include New York and East andWest Jersey. The dominion also aimed at bolstering


colonial defense in the event of war with the Indiansand hence, from the imperial viewpoint of Parlia-ment, was a statesmanlike move.

More importantly, the Dominion of New Eng-land was designed to promote urgently needed effi-ciency in the administration of the EnglishNavigation Laws. Those laws reflected the intensify-ing colonial rivalries of the seventeenth century.They sought to stitch England’s overseas posses-sions more tightly to the motherland by throttlingAmerican trade with countries not ruled by theEnglish crown. Like colonial peoples everywhere,the Americans chafed at such confinements, andsmuggling became an increasingly common andhonorable occupation.

At the head of the new dominion stood auto-cratic Sir Edmund Andros, an able English militaryman, conscientious but tactless. Establishing head-quarters in Puritanical Boston, he generated muchhostility by his open affiliation with the despisedChurch of England. The colonists were also out-raged by his noisy and Sabbath-profaning soldiers,who were accused of teaching the people “to drink,blaspheme, curse, and damn.”

Andros was prompt to use the mailed fist. Heruthlessly curbed the cherished town meetings; laidheavy restrictions on the courts, the press, and theschools; and revoked all land titles. Dispensing withthe popular assemblies, he taxed the people withoutthe consent of their duly elected representatives. Healso strove to enforce the unpopular NavigationLaws and suppress smuggling. Liberty-lovingcolonists, accustomed to unusual privileges duringlong decades of neglect, were goaded to the verge ofrevolt.

The people of old England, likewise resistingoppression, stole a march on the people of NewEngland. In 1688–1689 they engineered the memo-rable Glorious (or Bloodless) Revolution. Dethron-ing the despotic and unpopular Catholic James II,they enthroned the Protestant rulers of the Nether-lands, the Dutch-born William III and his Englishwife, Mary, daughter of James II.

When the news of the Glorious Revolutionreached America, the ramshackle Dominion of NewEngland collapsed like a house of cards. A Bostonmob, catching the fever, rose against the existingregime. Sir Edmund Andros attempted to flee inwoman’s clothing but was betrayed by boots pro-truding beneath his dress. He was hastily shippedoff to England.

Massachusetts, though rid of the despoticAndros, did not gain as much from the upheaval asit had hoped. In 1691 it was arbitrarily made a royalcolony, with a new charter and a new royal gover-nor. The permanent loss of the ancient charter was astaggering blow to the proud Puritans, who neverfully recovered. Worst of all, the privilege of voting,once a monopoly of church members, was now tobe enjoyed by all qualified male property holders.

England’s Glorious Revolution reverberatedthroughout the colonies from New England to theChesapeake. Inspired by the challenge to the crownin old England, many colonists seized the occasionto strike against royal authority in America. Unrestrocked both New York and Maryland from 1689 to1691, until newly appointed royal governorsrestored a semblance of order. Most importantly,the new monarchs relaxed the royal grip on colonialtrade, inaugurating a period of “salutary neglect”when the much-resented Navigation Laws wereonly weakly enforced.

Yet residues remained of Charles II’s effort toassert tighter administrative control over his

Confederation and Dominion in New England 55

Early Settlements in the Middle Colonies, with FoundingDates

empire. More English officials—judges, clerks, cus-toms officials—now staffed the courts and strolledthe wharves of English America. Many were incom-petent, corrupt hacks who knew little and cared lessabout American affairs. Appointed by influentialpatrons in far-off England, by their very presencethey blocked the rise of local leaders to positions ofpolitical power. Aggrieved Americans viewed themwith mounting contempt and resentment as theeighteenth century wore on.

Old Netherlanders at New Netherland

Late in the sixteenth century, the oppressed peopleof the Netherlands unfurled the standard of rebel-lion against Catholic Spain. After bloody and protracted fighting, they finally succeeded, with the aid of Protestant England, in winning theirindependence.

The seventeenth century—the era of Rem-brandt and other famous artists—was a golden agein Dutch history. This vigorous little lowland nationfinally emerged as a major commercial and navalpower, and then it ungratefully challenged the

supremacy of its former benefactor, England. Threegreat Anglo-Dutch naval wars were fought in theseventeenth century, with as many as a hundredships on each side. The sturdy Dutch dealt blowsabout as heavy as they received.

The Dutch Republic also became a leadingcolonial power, with by far its greatest activity in theEast Indies. There it maintained an enormous andprofitable empire for over three hundred years. TheDutch East India Company was virtually a statewithin a state and at one time supported an army of10,000 men and a fleet of 190 ships, 40 of them men-of-war.

Seeking greater riches, this enterprising com-pany employed an English explorer, Henry Hudson.Disregarding orders to sail northeast, he venturedinto Delaware Bay and New York Bay in 1609 andthen ascended the Hudson River, hoping that at lasthe had chanced upon the coveted shortcut throughthe continent. But, as the event proved, he merelyfiled a Dutch claim to a magnificently wooded andwatered area.

Much less powerful than the mighty Dutch EastIndia Company was the Dutch West India Company,which maintained profitable enterprises in theCaribbean. At times it was less interested in trading


than in raiding and at one fell swoop in 1628 cap-tured a fleet of Spanish treasure ships laden withloot worth $15 million. The company also estab-lished outposts in Africa and a thriving sugar indus-try in Brazil, which for several decades was itsprincipal center of activity in the New World.

New Netherland, in the beautiful Hudson Riverarea, was planted in 1623–1624 on a permanentbasis. Established by the Dutch West India Com-pany for its quick-profit fur trade, it was never morethan a secondary interest of the founders. The com-pany’s most brilliant stroke was to buy ManhattanIsland from the Indians (who did not actually “own”it) for virtually worthless trinkets—twenty-twothousand acres of what is now perhaps the mostvaluable real estate in the world for pennies peracre.

New Amsterdam—later New York City—was acompany town. It was run by and for the Dutchcompany, in the interests of the stockholders. Theinvestors had no enthusiasm for religious tolera-tion, free speech, or democratic practices; and thegovernors appointed by the company as directors-general were usually harsh and despotic. Religiousdissenters who opposed the official DutchReformed Church were regarded with suspicion,and for a while Quakers were savagely abused. In

response to repeated protests by the aggravatedcolonists, a local body with limited lawmakingpower was finally established.

This picturesque Dutch colony took on astrongly aristocratic tinge and retained it for genera-tions. Vast feudal estates fronting the Hudson River,known as patroonships, were granted to promoterswho agreed to settle fifty people on them. Onepatroonship in the Albany area was slightly largerthan the later state of Rhode Island.

Colorful little New Amsterdam attracted a cos-mopolitan population, as is common in seaporttowns. A French Jesuit missionary, visiting in the1640s, noted that eighteen different languages werebeing spoken in the streets. New York’s later babel ofimmigrant tongues was thus foreshadowed.

Friction with Englishand Swedish Neighbors

Vexations beset the Dutch company-colony fromthe beginning. The directors-general were largelyincompetent. Company shareholders demandedtheir dividends, even at the expense of the colony’swelfare. The Indians, infuriated by Dutch cruelties,

The Dutch Plant New York 57

retaliated with horrible massacres. As a defensemeasure, the hard-pressed settlers on ManhattanIsland erected a stout wall, from which Wall Streetderives its name.

New England was hostile to the growth of itsDutch neighbor, and the people of Connecticutfinally ejected intruding Hollanders from their ver-dant valley. Three of the four member colonies ofthe New England Confederation were eager to wipeout New Netherland with military force. But Massa-chusetts, which would have had to provide most ofthe troops, vetoed the proposed foray.

The Swedes in turn trespassed on Dutch pre-serves, from 1638 to 1655, by planting the anemiccolony of New Sweden on the Delaware River. This

was the golden age of Sweden, during and followingthe Thirty Years’ War of 1618–1648, in which its bril-liant King Gustavus Adolphus had carried the torchfor Protestantism. This outburst of energy in Swe-den caused it to enter the costly colonial game inAmerica, though on something of a shoestring.

Resenting the Swedish intrusion on theDelaware, the Dutch dispatched a small militaryexpedition in 1655. It was led by the ablest of thedirectors-general, Peter Stuyvesant, who had lost aleg while soldiering in the West Indies and wasdubbed “Father Wooden Leg” by the Indians. Themain fort fell after a bloodless siege, whereuponSwedish rule came to an abrupt end. The colonistswere absorbed by New Netherland.

New Sweden, never important, soon fadedaway, leaving behind in later Delaware a sprinklingof Swedish place names and Swedish log cabins (thefirst in America), as well as an admixture of Swedishblood.

Dutch Residues in New York

Lacking vitality, and representing only a secondarycommercial interest of the Dutch, New Netherlandlay under the menacing shadow of the vigorousEnglish colonies to the north. In addition, it washoneycombed with New England immigrants.Numbering about one-half of New Netherland’s tenthousand souls in 1664, they might in time haveseized control from within.

The days of the Dutch on the Hudson werenumbered, for the English regarded them as intrud-ers. In 1664, after the imperially ambitious CharlesII had granted the area to his brother, the Duke ofYork, a strong English squadron appeared off thedecrepit defenses of New Amsterdam. A fumingPeter Stuyvesant, short of all munitions exceptcourage, was forced to surrender without firing ashot. New Amsterdam was thereupon renamed NewYork, in honor of the Duke of York. England won asplendid harbor, strategically located in the middleof the mainland colonies, and a stately HudsonRiver penetrating the interior. With the removal ofthis foreign wedge, the English banner now wavedtriumphantly over a solid stretch of territory fromMaine to the Carolinas.


The conquered Dutch province tenaciouslyretained many of the illiberal features of earlierdays. An autocratic spirit survived, and the aristo-cratic element gained strength when certain corruptEnglish governors granted immense acreage to theirfavorites. Influential landowning families—such asthe Livingstons and the De Lanceys—wielded dis-proportionate power in the affairs of colonial NewYork. These monopolistic land policies, combinedwith the lordly atmosphere, discouraged manyEuropean immigrants from coming. The physicalgrowth of New York was correspondingly retarded.

The Dutch peppered place names over the land,including Harlem (Haarlem), Brooklyn (Breucke-len), and Hell Gate (Hellegat). They likewise lefttheir imprint on the gambrel-roofed architecture. Asfor social customs and folkways, no other foreigngroup of comparable size has made so colorful acontribution. Noteworthy were Easter eggs, SantaClaus, waffles, sauerkraut, bowling, sleighing, skat-ing, and kolf (golf)—a dangerous game played withheavy clubs and forbidden in settled areas.

Penn’s Holy Experiment in Pennsylvania

A remarkable group of dissenters, commonly knownas Quakers, arose in England during the mid-1600s.Their name derived from the report that they“quaked” when under deep religious emotion. Offi-cially they were known as the Religious Society ofFriends.

Quakers were especially offensive to the author-ities, both religious and civil. They refused to sup-port the established Church of England with taxes.They built simple meetinghouses, congregatedwithout a paid clergy, and “spoke up” themselves inmeetings when moved. Believing that they were allchildren in the sight of God, they kept their broad-brimmed hats on in the presence of their “betters”and addressed others with simple “thee”s and“thou”s, rather than with conventional titles. Theywould take no oaths because Jesus had com-

The Quakers in Pennsylvania 59

manded, “Swear not at all.” This peculiarity oftenembroiled them with government officials, for “testoaths” were still required to establish the fact that aperson was not a Roman Catholic.

The Quakers, beyond a doubt, were a people ofdeep conviction. They abhorred strife and warfareand refused military service. As advocates of passiveresistance, they would turn the other cheek andrebuild their meetinghouse on the site where theirenemies had torn it down. Their courage and devo-tion to principle finally triumphed. Although attimes they seemed stubborn and unreasonable,they were a simple, devoted, democratic people,contending in their own high-minded way for reli-gious and civic freedom.

William Penn, a wellborn and athletic youngEnglishman, was attracted to the Quaker faith in1660, when only sixteen years old. His father, disap-proving, administered a sound flogging. After vari-ous adventures in the army (the best portrait of thepeaceful Quaker has him in armor), the youth firmlyembraced the despised faith and suffered muchpersecution. The courts branded him a “saucy” and“impertinent” fellow. Several hundred of his less for-tunate fellow Quakers died of cruel treatment, and

thousands more were fined, flogged, or cast intodank prisons.

Penn’s thoughts naturally turned to the NewWorld, where a sprinkling of Quakers had alreadyfled, notably to Rhode Island, North Carolina, andNew Jersey. Eager to establish an asylum for his peo-ple, he also hoped to experiment with liberal ideasin government and at the same time make a profit.Finally, in 1681, he managed to secure from the kingan immense grant of fertile land, in consideration ofa monetary debt owed to his deceased father by thecrown. The king called the area Pennsylvania(“Penn’s Woodland”) in honor of the sire. The mod-est son, fearing that critics would accuse him ofnaming it after himself, sought unsuccessfully tochange the name.

Pennsylvania was by far the best advertised ofall the colonies. Its founder—the “first Americanadvertising man”—sent out paid agents and distrib-uted countless pamphlets printed in English,Dutch, French, and German. Unlike the lures ofmany other American real estate promoters, thenand later, Penn’s inducements were generally truth-ful. He especially welcomed forward-looking spiritsand substantial citizens, including industrious car-


penters, masons, shoemakers, and other manualworkers. His liberal land policy, which encouragedsubstantial holdings, was instrumental in attractinga heavy inflow of immigrants.

Quaker Pennsylvania and Its Neighbors

Penn formally launched his colony in 1681. His taskwas simplified by the presence of several thousand“squatters”—Dutch, Swedish, English, Welsh—whowere already scattered along the banks of theDelaware River. Philadelphia, meaning “brotherlylove” in Greek, was more carefully planned thanmost colonial cities and consequently enjoyed wideand attractive streets.

Penn farsightedly bought land from the Indians,including Chief Tammany, later patron saint of NewYork’s political Tammany Hall. His treatment of thenative peoples was so fair that the Quaker “broadbrims” went among them unarmed and evenemployed them as baby-sitters. For a brief period,Pennsylvania seemed the promised land of amica-ble Indian-white relations. Some southern tribeseven migrated to Pennsylvania, seeking the Quakerhaven. But ironically, Quaker tolerance proved theundoing of Quaker Indian policy. As non-QuakerEuropean immigrants flooded into the province,they undermined the Quakers’ own benevolent pol-icy toward the Indians. The feisty Scots-Irish wereparticularly unpersuaded by Quaker idealism.

Penn’s new proprietary regime was unusuallyliberal and included a representative assemblyelected by the landowners. No tax-supported statechurch drained coffers or demanded allegiance.

Freedom of worship was guaranteed to all residents,although Penn, under pressure from London, wasforced to deny Catholics and Jews the privilege ofvoting or holding office. The death penalty wasimposed only for treason and murder, as comparedwith some two hundred capital crimes in England.

Among other noteworthy features, no provisionwas made by the peace-loving Quakers of Pennsyl-vania for a military defense. No restrictions wereplaced on immigration, and naturalization wasmade easy. The humane Quakers early developed astrong dislike of black slavery, and in the genial glowof Pennsylvania some progress was made towardsocial reform.

With its many liberal features, Pennsylvaniaattracted a rich mix of ethnic groups. They includednumerous religious misfits who were repelled by theharsh practices of neighboring colonies. ThisQuaker refuge boasted a surprisingly modernatmosphere in an unmodern age and to an unusualdegree afforded economic opportunity, civil liberty,and religious freedom. Even so, “blue laws” prohib-ited “ungodly revelers,” stage plays, playing cards,dice, games, and excessive hilarity.

Under such generally happy auspices, Penn’sbrainchild grew lustily. The Quakers were shrewdbusinesspeople, and in a short time the settlers wereexporting grain and other foodstuffs. Within twoyears Philadelphia claimed three hundred housesand twenty-five hundred people. Within nineteenyears—by 1700—the colony was surpassed in popu-lation and wealth only by long-established Virginiaand Massachusetts.

William Penn, who altogether spent about fouryears in Pennsylvania, was never fully appreciatedby his colonists. His governors, some of themincompetent and tactless, quarreled bitterly withthe people, who were constantly demanding greaterpolitical control. Penn himself became too friendlywith James II, the deposed Catholic king. Thricearrested for treason, thrust for a time into a debtors’prison, and afflicted by a paralytic stroke, he diedfull of sorrows. His enduring monument was notonly a noble experiment in government but also anew commonwealth. Based on civil and religiousliberty, and dedicated to freedom of conscience andworship, it held aloft a hopeful torch in a world ofsemidarkness.

Small Quaker settlements flourished next doorto Pennsylvania. New Jersey was started in 1664,when two noble proprietors received the area from

Colonial Pennsylvania 61

In a Boston lecture in 1869, Ralph WaldoEmerson (1803–1882) declared,

“The sect of the Quakers in their bestrepresentatives appear to me to have comenearer to the sublime history and genius ofChrist than any other of the sects.”

the Duke of York. A substantial number of New Eng-landers, including many whose weary soil hadpetered out, flocked to the new colony. One of theproprietors sold West New Jersey in 1674 to a groupof Quakers, who here set up a sanctuary even beforePennsylvania was launched. East New Jersey wasalso acquired in later years by the Quakers, whosewings were clipped in 1702 when the crown com-bined the two Jerseys in a royal colony.

Swedish-tinged Delaware consisted of onlythree counties—two at high tide, the witticismgoes—and was named after Lord De La Warr, theharsh military governor who had arrived in Virginiain 1610. Harboring some Quakers, and closely asso-ciated with Penn’s prosperous colony, Delaware wasgranted its own assembly in 1703. But until theAmerican Revolution, it remained under the gover-nor of Pennsylvania.

The Middle Way in the Middle Colonies

The middle colonies—New York, New Jersey,Delaware, and Pennsylvania—enjoyed certain fea-tures in common.

In general, the soil was fertile and the expanseof land was broad, unlike rock-bestrewn New Eng-land. Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey cameto be known as the “bread colonies,” by virtue oftheir heavy exports of grain.

Rivers also played a vital role. Broad, languidstreams—notably the Susquehanna, the Delaware,and the Hudson—tapped the fur trade of the inte-rior and beckoned adventuresome spirits into thebackcountry. The rivers had few cascading water-falls, unlike New England’s, and hence presented lit-tle inducement to milling or manufacturing withwater-wheel power.

A surprising amount of industry nonethelesshummed in the middle colonies. Virginal forestsabounded for lumbering and shipbuilding. Thepresence of deep river estuaries and landlockedharbors stimulated both commerce and the growthof seaports, such as New York and Philadelphia.Even Albany, more than a hundred miles up theHudson, was a port of some consequence in colo-nial days.

The middle colonies were in many respectsmidway between New England and the southernplantation group. Except in aristocratic New York,the landholdings were generally intermediate insize—smaller than in the big-acreage South butlarger than in small-farm New England. Local government lay somewhere between the personal-ized town meeting of New England and the diffusedcounty government of the South. There were fewerindustries in the middle colonies than in New Eng-land, more than in the South.

Yet the middle colonies, which in some wayswere the most American part of America, couldclaim certain distinctions in their own right. Gener-ally speaking, the population was more ethnicallymixed than that of other settlements. The peoplewere blessed with an unusual degree of religious tol-eration and democratic control. Earnest and devoutQuakers, in particular, made a compassionate con-tribution to human freedom out of all proportion totheir numbers. Desirable land was more easilyacquired in the middle colonies than in New Eng-land or in the tidewater South. One result was that aconsiderable amount of economic and socialdemocracy prevailed, though less so in aristocraticNew York.

Modern-minded Benjamin Franklin, oftenregarded as the most representative American per-sonality of his era, was a child of the middlecolonies. Although it is true that Franklin was born aYankee in puritanical Boston, he entered Philadel-phia as a seventeen-year-old in 1720 with a loaf ofbread under each arm and immediately found acongenial home in the urbane, open atmosphere ofwhat was then North America’s biggest city. OnePennsylvanian later boasted that Franklin “came tolife at seventeen, in Philadelphia.”

By the time Franklin arrived in the City of Broth-erly Love, the American colonies were themselves“coming to life.” Population was growing robustly.Transportation and communication were graduallyimproving. The British, for the most part, continuedtheir hands-off policies, leaving the colonists tofashion their own local governments, run their ownchurches, and develop networks of intercolonialtrade. As people and products crisscrossed thecolonies with increasing frequency and in increas-ing volume, Americans began to realize that—farremoved from Mother England—they were notmerely surviving, but truly thriving.


Examining the Evidence 63

A Seventeenth-Century Valuables Cabinet In1999 a boatyard worker on Cape Cod and his sister,a New Hampshire teacher, inherited a small(twenty-pound, sixteen and a half inch high) chestthat had always stood on their grandmother’s halltable, known in the family as the “Franklin Chest.”Eager to learn more about it, they set out to dis-cover the original owner, tracing their familygenealogy and consulting with furniture experts.In January 2000 this rare seventeenth-century cab-inetry, its full provenance now known, appearedon the auction block and sold for a record $2.4 mil-lion to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass-achusetts. No less extraordinary than the price wasthe history of its creator and its owners embodiedin the piece. Salem cabinetmaker James Symonds(1636–1726) had made the chest for his relatives,Joseph Pope (1650–1712) and Bathsheba Folger(1652–1726), to commemorate their 1679 mar-

riage. Symonds carved the Popes’ initials and thedate on the door of the cabinet. He also put elabo-rate S curves on the sides remarkably similar to theMannerist carved oak paneling produced in Nor-folk, England, from where his own cabinetmakerfather had emigrated. Behind the chest’s door areten drawers where the Popes would have kept jew-elry, money, deeds, and writing materials. Surelythey prized the chest as a sign of refinement to beshown off in their best room, a sentiment passeddown through the next thirteen generations evenas the Popes’ identities were lost. The chest mayhave become known as the “Franklin Chest”because Bathsheba was Benjamin Franklin’s aunt,but also because that identification appealed moreto descendants ashamed that the Quaker Popes,whose own parents had been persecuted for theirfaith, were virulent accusers during the Salemwitch trials of 1692.


C hro n o l o g y

1517 Martin Luther begins Protestant Reformation

1536 John Calvin of Geneva publishes Institutes ofthe Christian Religion

1620 Pilgrims sail on the Mayflower to PlymouthBay

1624 Dutch found New Netherland

1629 Charles I dismisses Parliament and persecutes Puritans

1630 Puritans found Massachusetts Bay Colony

1635- Roger Williams convicted of heresy and 1636 founds Rhode Island colony

1635- Connecticut and New Haven colonies 1638 founded

1637 Pequot War

1638 Anne Hutchinson banished fromMassachusetts colony

1639 Connecticut’s Fundamental Orders drafted

1642-1648 English Civil War

1643 New England Confederation formed

1655 New Netherland conquers New Sweden

1664 England seizes New Netherland from DutchEast and West Jersey colonies founded

1675-1676 King Philip’s War

1681 William Penn founds Pennsylvania colony

1686 Royal authority creates Dominion of NewEngland

1688- Glorious Revolution overthrows Stuarts and 1689 Dominion of New England

VA RY I N G VIEWPOINTS

Europeanizing America or Americanizing Europe?

The history of discovery and colonization raisesperhaps the most fundamental question about

all American history. Should it be understood as theextension of European civilization into the NewWorld or as the gradual development of a uniquely“American” culture? An older school of thoughttended to emphasize the Europeanization of Amer-ica. Historians of that persuasion paid close atten-tion to the situation in Europe, particularly Englandand Spain, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.They also focused on the exportation of the valuesand institutions of the mother countries to the newlands in the western sea. Although some historiansalso examined the transforming effect of Americaon Europe, this approach, too, remained essentiallyEurocentric.

More recently, historians have concentrated onthe distinctiveness of America. The concern withEuropean origins has evolved into a comparativetreatment of European settlements in the NewWorld. England, Spain, Holland, and France nowattract more attention for the divergent kinds ofsocieties they fostered in America than for the waythey commonly pursued Old World ambitions in theNew. The newest trend to emerge is a transatlantichistory that views European empires and theirAmerican colonies as part of a process of culturalcross-fertilization affecting not only the coloniesbut Europe and Africa as well.

This less Eurocentric approach has alsochanged the way historians explain the colonialdevelopment of America. Rather than telling the

story of colonization as the imposition of European ways of life through “discovery” and “con-quest,” historians increasingly view the colonialperiod as one of “contact” and “adaptation”between European, African, and Native Americanways of life. Scholars including Richard White,Alfred Crosby, William Cronon, Karen Kupperman,and Timothy Silver have enhanced understandingof the cultural as well as the physical transforma-tions that resulted from contact. An environment offorests and meadows, for example, gave way to alandscape of fields and fences as Europeans soughtto replicate the agricultural villages they had knownin Europe. Aggressive deforestation even producedclimatic changes, as treeless tracts made for colderwinters, hotter summers, and earth-gouging floods.Ramon Gutierrez’s When Jesus Came, the CornMothers Went Away (1991) has expanded the colo-nial stage to include interactions between Spanishsettlers and Native Americans in the Southwest.

The variety of American societies that emergedout of the interaction of Europeans and NativeAmericans has also become better appreciated.Early histories by esteemed historians like PerryMiller exaggerated the extent to which the New Eng-land Puritan experience defined the essence ofAmerica. Not only did these historians overlooknon-English experiences, they failed to recognizethe diversity in motives, methods, and conse-quences that existed even within English coloniza-tion. The numbers alone tell an interesting story. By1700 about 220,000 English colonists had emigratedto the Caribbean, about 120,000 to the southernmainland colonies, and only about 40,000 to themiddle Atlantic and New England colonies(although by the mid-eighteenth century, thoseheaded for the latter destination would account formore than half the total). Studies such as Richard S.

Dunn’s Sugar and Slaves (1972) emphasize theimportance of the Caribbean in early English colo-nization efforts and make clear that the desire foreconomic gain, more than the quest for religiousfreedom, fueled the migration to the Caribbeanislands. Similarly, Edmund S. Morgan’s AmericanSlavery, American Freedom (1975) stresses the role ofeconomic ambition in explaining the English peo-pling of the Chesapeake and the eventual importa-tion of African slaves to that region. Studies byBernard Bailyn and David Hackett Fisher demon-strate that there was scarcely a “typical” Englishmigrant to the New World. English colonistsmigrated both singly and in families, and for eco-nomic, social, political, and religious reasons.

Recent studies have also paid more attention tothe conflicts that emerged out of this diversity insettler populations and colonial societies. This per-spective emphasizes the contests for economic andpolitical supremacy within the colonies, such as theefforts of the Massachusetts Bay elite to ward off thechallenges of religious “heretics” and the pressuresthat an increasingly restless lower class put onwealthy merchants and large landowners. Nowherewas internal conflict so prevalent as in the ethni-cally diverse middle colonies, where factionalantagonisms became the defining feature of publiclife.

The picture of colonial America that is emergingfrom all this new scholarship is of a societyunique—and diverse—from inception. No longersimply Europe transplanted, American colonialsociety by 1700 is now viewed as an outgrowth of many intertwining roots—of different Europeanand African heritages, of varied encounters withnative peoples and a wilderness environment, andof complicated mixtures of settler populations, eachwith its own distinctive set of ambitions.

Varying Viewpoints 65

For further reading, see page A2 of the Appendix. For web resources, go to http://college.hmco.com.

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